There Has To Be Somewhere

In collaboration with Grand Union, the MA Art History and Curating course at University of Birmingham presents ‘There Has To Be Somewhere‘: a group show presenting sculptural, textile, ceramic, and film works by artists Rachael House, Lucy Hutchinson, and Emelia Kerr Beale.

‘There Has to Be Somewhere‘ presents sculptural, textile, ceramic, and film works by artists Rachael House, Lucy Hutchinson, and Emelia Kerr Beale. Actively seeking to share their personal experiences and collective histories, these individual works challenge societal norms of belonging. Our artists explore themes of well-being, self-acceptance, self-advocacy and support, that spark conversations around disability, queer identity, and feminist issues.

The exhibition title is a hopeful yet urgent message towards somewhere we can take comfort and make our own; sanctuary is not primarily a place but something that can be lived. ‘There Has To Be Somewhere’ is a quiet space for contemplation and discussion. Through displays of craft, the exhibition looks at the past and present to correct misconceptions, rewrite narratives, and imagine desirable futures. The works’ collective reference to the natural world reminds us of the healing power of nature which can recentre us in times of discomfort.

Rachael House

Rachael House is an artist based in London who makes events, objects, performance, drawings, and zines. As part of a transtemporal, feminist family of artists, House’s work focuses on feminist and queer politics and resistant histories / herstories/ theirstories, in an aim to reach and bring together like-minded people. Occupying a space between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, her performances, comic strips, and ceramics have been shown across a range of spaces and contexts.

Fats Femmes Bisexuals

This body of work derives from a solo exhibition, Fats Femmes Bisexuals at The Parlour Gallery in 2022, part of Triangle Deptford, a new grassroots LGBTQIA+ cultural centre in South London. The ceramic wall tiles humorously and cleverly aim to reframe our understanding of queer identities. The quotes on the tiled plaques derive from multiple voices, including queer writers and activists. Originally intended as insults to LGBTQIA+ communities, some of the quotes used have been playfully reversed to welcome and bring joy to members of the queer community.

House’s works engage with spaces of comfort and discomfort, from exclusionary contact ads in gay newspapers stating, ‘no fats, no femmes, no bisexuals’, to groups, such as with the euphemism ‘Friends of Dorothy’ and Marlene Dietrich’s circle of women friends and lovers, and the protective eyes of House’s genderqueer deities. Fats Femmes Bisexuals asks us to consider who we want to welcome into our lives.

Lucy Hutchinson

Lucy Hutchinson is an artist based between London and Lancashire, working across print, installation, sculpture, sound, and ritual to construct immersive environments that unpick the complexities of contemporary life and challenge dominant narratives. Tracing her Northern ancestry, Hutchinson’s recent project Into the Shade is a personal perspective on the legacy of the Lancashire Witch trials. Hutchinson delves into the past to speculate on the future, combining fact and fiction to manifest new visions of reality which break apart binaries and reinterpret contested narratives.

Into the Shade

Into the Shade unpicks notions of gender, social class, and regionalism by viewing them through the lens of the Lancashire Witch trials (1612). Harmful narratives that demonised these women and disregarded their abilities to heal, nurture, and support each other were spread by the press, contributing to the infamous witch-hunts.

The work explores the relationship between witchcraft, printmaking, and biotechnology to conjure an alternative future in which technology is used to manifest the powers of witchcraft in contemporary society. The larynx, an integration of human and bird physiology, narrates the mythology of the Lancashire witches’ connection with the natural world. The talisman, feather, postcard, rye, and ergot, act both as historical reference points and tools for divination.

Emelia Kerr Beale

Emelia Kerr Beale is an interdisciplinary artist based in Glasgow, working across drawing, sculpture, textiles, and film. As an access consultant, they deliver disability equality training for arts organisations. Kerr Beale creates a visual language of disability and illness that acknowledges the importance of lived experience and brings together conflicting notions of these subjects as complex experiences in which discomfort, pleasure, anxiety, and joy can co-exist.

trust for support

trust for support is an installation of textiles, videography, and print that explore the artist’s experiences of illness in terms of coping methods, support structures, interdependence, and the construction of knowledge. They consider medicalisation a form of mythmaking, often prioritised over self-advocacy and lived experience as valuable sources of knowledge. Using symbolism to represent bodies, often from nature, Kerr Beale rejects binary representations of bodies.

The Major Oak Tree, located in the artist’s hometown of Nottingham, is the subject of their collaborative film that addresses a systematic disregard for the self-advocacy of disabled and chronically ill people. The unwearable garments, covered with motifs of branches and chains, parallels the scaffolding that intervenes with the tree’s intuitive self-support.

Collaborators:

Robin Kerr
Finn Rabbitt Dove
Clara Hancock
Billie Angel